My thoughts were fuzzy, forming slowly, and my body was refusing to respond to my demands, no matter how stridently I made them. I lay motionless, and the toe dug into my side again, harder this time. I wasn’t sure it qualified as being kicked—quite—but it was definitely getting close.
“I told you. Didn’t I tell you? I don’t make a lot of demands of the living, I know it’s not my place, but Oberon’s eyes, child, when a ghost tells you not to do something, you’re not supposed to rush right out and give it a try.”
Firtha. The toe belonged to Firtha. Which meant I was back in the dream, and my body wasn’t really here, and I should be able to do anything I wanted to do.
That, or I had died when the sealskin fell, and I was going to spend my afterlife sprawling naked on the ground at the edge of the sea. Yeah: definitely naked. I could feel every stone and twig digging into the skin of my side. My hip had landed squarely on a big, sharp rock, and it was probably going to leave a bruise.
I could also feel the sealskin, once more lying flat against my back. I opened my eyes.
Firtha withdrew her toe and put her hands on her hips, openly glaring at me. “I can only save you so many times,” she said, tone peevish. “Didn’t I tell you that if you refused my gift, you’d die? Was that somehow less than clear? Should I have spoken more slowly? Dove into the depths and surfaced with a dead man’s bones, used them to perform a little puppet show about how horrible your death would be? Would that, perhaps, have gotten through to you?”
“I’m sorry.” I pushed myself into a sitting position. The presence of the sealskin was more comforting than I would have thought possible. I reached up and touched the knot, reassuring myself that it wasn’t going to come untied again.
It didn’t come untied, scolded my own mind. You untied it, remember?
I decided to ignore myself.
“Gillian, please. I don’t know how many shocks your system can take. This could have been the end of you.”
“Wasn’t it already?”
Firtha blinked at me, puzzlement in her impossibly green eyes. “What do you mean? You stand, you sit, you walk among the living with my skin across your shoulders. If that’s an ending, I don’t know what a beginning looks like anymore.”
“But I’m not human.” I touched the knot again, less gently this time. “If you take this away from me, I die. How is that supposed to feel normal? How am I supposed to go home like this?”
“Ah.” She offered me her hands. “Walk with me, child.”
Arguing with the ghost of the woman whose flayed hide was keeping me alive seemed like a bad idea. I took her hands, and she pulled me from the stony ground, letting them go before she smiled at me and started walking across the heath.
I followed her, stones and bits of thorny sedge biting into the soles of my feet and making me hop and curse. She didn’t seem to notice them. Maybe it had to do with being dead, or maybe she had just been haunting this place for so long that her feet had had the time to get tough as leather.
When we reached the edge of the cliff where we’d met before, I expected her to stop and sit. Instead, she turned, and began making her slow way down a pathway carved into the side of the rock. I hadn’t noticed it before. I wasn’t sure it had existed.
“Dream logic is the worst,” I muttered.
“This isn’t a dream,” she said, not looking over her shoulder. “It’s a memory mixed with an afterlife, and that means it isn’t quite the same thing. Close enough, I suppose, but still, the rules are different here. I’ve never had company before.”
“Why not? Hasn’t anyone else . . . ” I stumbled over my next words and stopped talking. I couldn’t think of a polite way to ask whether I was the first person to wear her skin.
“They have, yes; several before you. We never talked like this.”
“Why not?”
“Well, the first of them killed me, and the second stole me, and the rest had me passed to them in the manner that’s become customary for Selkies. They were told what it would mean to accept me before they tied me around their waists or slipped me over their shoulders, and they had the chance to say ‘no, thank you, but no, let this pass to someone else’s hands.’” Firtha glanced over her shoulder at me, a wistful smile on her lips. I realized with some surprise that I could see it, despite the dimness of the path around us. My night vision was improving.
“I don’t think any of them ever realized I had a name, or that I’d been myself before I was their gateway to the sea. It didn’t matter much in their day-to-day, nor will it matter in yours—I won’t swim beside you, won’t murmur in your ear. But not knowing I was here, they could never invite me closer, and we never knew each other. Not even as well as I already know you.” The smile faded as she turned to face front once more. “Ah, well. Tides go in and tides come out, and none of them needed me as much as you do, little girl who thinks she knows what it means to be human.”
“You said they were all asked. No one asked me.”
“No one asked me, either. So I suppose we’ll be sullen and resentful together, won’t we?”
The path had been cut close enough to the cliffside that we were sheltered from the worst of the wind, although not from the foam; it blew upward from the sea, stinging and soothing at the same time, coating us both until—by the time we reached the bottom—we were entirely soaked. I followed Firtha onto the rocky beach, wiping sea spray out of my eyes.
“I could use a towel,” I said. “Or a coat. A coat would be awesome.”
“Why? Are you cold?”
I hesitated. I wasn’t. I was naked and drenched and as comfortable as if it were a summer afternoon. “No,” I finally admitted.
“Good. I’d worry the magic was failing if you were, and then all of this would have been for nothing. A tiresome end for a story stretching over centuries.” Firtha turned to face me. “Look around. What do you see?”
Arguing with ghosts is the way people die in horror movies. I looked around. “I see the beach,” I said.
“Only that?”
“I see . . . I see the sea.” It looked deep and wild and strangely inviting, like every wave that struck the shore was trying to beckon me to follow it to someplace I’d never been before.
“And the sea sees you. Or if it doesn’t, it’ll see you very soon. You belong to the water now, as much as you belong to the land.”
I wrenched my eyes away from the waves and back to her face. “Which isn’t normal. It isn’t human.”
“Why are you so hung up on being human? Lots of people aren’t human. I’m not human. My mother isn’t human. I’m pretty sure she’d turn you into a rock and drop you in the Atlantic if you tried to imply that she was. Being human isn’t the only way to enjoy the world, and being a Selkie means you’ll be able to see and experience things no human ever could.”
“But I didn’t agree to this.”
“Neither of us did, Gillian. You didn’t agree to being born, either, and yet here we both are.” Firtha held her hands out toward me, palms tilted toward the cloud-swaddled sky. Fine webs ran between her fingers, connecting them all the way to the first knuckle. I reached out, hesitantly, and touched one fingertip to the web between her thumb and forefinger.
“What are these?” I asked. “I’m growing them.”
“I wasn’t a Selkie,” she said. “I was Roane. We didn’t have to transform to swim the seas as equals, and when we did change our shapes, no one could steal them from us. We were stronger versions of what you’ve become—and I’m not trying to shame you by saying that. It’s the way of Faerie. Every generation is a little weaker than the one that came before it. Oberon and his Queens begat the Firstborn, and the Firstborn begat their descendant races, and we were as much reduced from our parents as they had been from theirs.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I didn’t, and I d
id. I was Roane, and parts of you will echo me now, because parts of you are mine. I am, in a way, another mother.”
“Oh, great,” I grumbled. “Three moms. That is exactly what I needed.”
Firtha laughed, the sound light and lovely and perfectly matched to the sounding of the sea. “You seem stubborn enough to require a more than average amount of mothering, it’s true. And my mother will be glad of the adoption, having lost all her grandchildren tides and tides ago. The webs between your fingers are to help you swim. You don’t need them the way I did, because you’ll rarely be swimming and human at the same time, but that’s their purpose.”
I squinted at her. “The fuck you say?”
“I’m not the one to teach you how to be what you are now. I don’t have those answers.” Firtha indicated the lines of her body. “I wore my skin, when it was mine, as everyone else does. Now you have two skins to care for, yours and mine, and each of them will ask different things of you, and neither of them will make you human. I need you to promise that you won’t set my skin aside again.”
“I—”
“Promise. On my grave, on the pearls that were my eyes, swear to me that you’ll keep it close until my mother tells you it’s safe to set it aside.”
“All right.” I put my hands up to ward her off. “I won’t take it off again. But somebody who can explain the things you say you can’t had better come along sooner rather than later, because I don’t like everything being vague and weird and stupid.”
“Welcome to Faerie,” said Firtha, and stepped forward, and kissed me on the forehead. I blinked and was suddenly looking at the ceiling of the room where I’d collapsed.
“Okay, I hate this,” I announced, and started to sit up before freezing mid-motion. The sealskin wasn’t tied around my shoulders. I could feel its absence the way I would have felt a missing tooth, like an aching, unwanted void in the world. And I knew, with an absolute, sickening certainty, that if I broke contact with it again, I would plunge back into the dark.
Would Firtha be waiting there to yell at me again? Or was I running out of chances? I had a nasty feeling that my reserves were almost exhausted. I fumbled on the floor behind me, relaxing only when my fingers struck the soft, pliable leather of my inexplicable lifeline.
Since the sealskin was already untied, I shifted my butt until I could pick the whole thing up and bring it around to where I could see it. It looked like no other piece of fur I had ever seen. It was sleek and shining, almost like it was still alive. The leather was supple. When I turned it over to examine it, there were no scars or seams; the whole thing must have been removed in a single long cut.
I thought of Firtha, naked and alone on the rocky shore, and I shivered.
The fur itself was dark silver, dappled with slate-colored spots. I ran a hand over it, shivering again as a ghostly hand ran along my spine. It felt like I was stroking myself.
Lowering my hand, I swung the sealskin around my shoulders and retied the two long strips of fur at the front into a tight knot. As soon as I took my hands away, it got easier to breathe. I scowled. So this was it: I was stuck. I’d have to spend the rest of my life wandering around with a big chunk of fur hanging around my neck. Bad enough if I’d lived in Alaska or something, but this was California. I was a student at Berkeley. The campus vegans were going to eat me for breakfast once they realized I was wearing fur, and there wasn’t going to be anything I could do about it. Take it off and die. Keep it on and admit that my life had changed forever, and I hadn’t been given a single say.
Well. That wasn’t quite true. I had a choice: I could decide to keep the skin on and live with what came after, or I could take it off and die.
“That’s not a choice,” I muttered. “It’s an ultimatum.”
Anger swept over me, washing the last of my weakness away. This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair, and I didn’t want it. What the hell made Miranda and Toby think they got to lie to me like this? They both said they were my mother, and they were both right. Toby had given birth to me and Miranda had raised me, and they both said they loved me, but how could they love me if they were going to lie to me like this?
Toby wasn’t human. Miranda had known all along, and she had never told me. They’d both treated me like I didn’t matter just because I was younger than them, like being a kid meant I didn’t get to have an opinion. I was always going to be a kid in their eyes. I was never going to be allowed to grow up and decide things for myself.
I shoved myself fully off the floor, turning in a slow circle as I glared at the room. There was only one door. There were still the windows, though, and I hadn’t had the chance to check them properly before. I resumed my trek across the room.
The window wasn’t locked. I pushed it open and leaned out, looking down on an impossible, wine-colored sea that wasn’t the Pacific. I didn’t know what it was, but I couldn’t imagine any ocean actually coming in that specific shade of purple, like someone had crushed a world’s worth of grapes into a single place. I gaped.
“Oh, come on,” I said, my voice sounding thin and whiny to my own ears. The sky overhead was sunset-bright, colored in bands of red and gold and orange. A few early stars were peeking through the light, and I counted at least five moons overhead, one twice as large as the one I knew, three of them as small as sequins sewn onto the sky.
Looking at the scene was threatening to give me a headache. I stepped back hurriedly, leaving the window open. My heart was beating too hard and too fast. I touched the knot at my sternum, clutching it until my breathing started to return to normal.
Denial seemed like an attractive option. Denial would let me pretend none of this was happening, that I’d been drugged by the woman who had snatched me and this was all an elaborate fantasy that I’d snap out of at any moment. I was probably in a hospital somewhere, with an IV in my arm and a bunch of concerned doctors standing around waiting for me to wake up.
Unfortunately, denial would require me to have been able to make all this up, and I wasn’t sure I could have. Too many of the details were things I would never have imagined, like the man who carried me through the cold, and Miranda keeping secrets about a whole other world. And Firtha. I could have imagined a lot of things, but a naked woman who was sort of my third mother now? That was a step too far.
If I couldn’t have denial, I could at least have anger. I made a short, sharp sound of unhappiness and rushed the bed, grabbing the gauzy veils surrounding it and pulling them down. They gave way with a satisfying ripping sound, fluttering to the floor. I wasn’t done. I started throwing pillows, and when I ran out of those, rushed for the dresser against the opposite wall and wrenched the drawers out, one by one, tipping their contents onto the floor.
The destruction made me feel better, however childish that may have been. I stopped when I ran out of drawers, panting and looking out on the havoc I had wreaked. Then I touched the sealskin at my chest. Nothing had actually changed. Nothing was going to change. This was my life now, whether I liked it or not—whether I understood it or not. I couldn’t go back.
I put my hands over my face and wept.
SIX
Crying is cathartic, but eventually the body runs out of tears, and then it’s time to start doing something else. I uncovered my face, wiping my eyes and nose on the sleeve of my sweater, and eyed the door. I hadn’t heard a click when Miranda left. Maybe it wasn’t locked. Maybe I could get out of here, find a place to clear my head.
Quickly, like I was getting away with something, I crossed to the door and tried the knob. It turned. I said a silent thanks, pulling it open—
—and froze at the sight of the woman with wings who was sitting in an alcove on the other side of the small landing. Wings? Yes. Wings. They were long and thin and the color of maple syrup. When she sat up straighter to look at me, they opened, and I could see right through them. They looked like they belonged on a dragon
fly, not on a woman roughly my age. Her hair was electric orange, and her eyes were only a few shades darker, as impossible as the rest of her.
She was wearing jeans and a red Old Navy tank top, and somehow that was the cherry atop the sundae of “nope” that was her existence. She wasn’t human. Toby had pointy ears, sure, but she wasn’t . . . wasn’t alien like this woman, this impossible, winged woman. Everything about her was wrong. Her bone structure was too delicate and her skin was too smooth and I didn’t know whether she was the most beautiful or the most terrible thing I had ever seen.
“You’re awake, then, missy,” she said, in a voice that somehow managed to sound like the ringing of distant bells. That, too, was impossible. All of these people were impossible.
“This isn’t happening,” I said.
She nodded. “Understandable reaction, I’d say. I had a similar one when I woke up and saw myself, all pale and colorless and dim as I am now. How you people can stand it, I may never know. How do you feel? I’m supposed to ask as whether you want feeding or drinking or anything of that sort, and then to tell you to go back to your room, please, because it’s not time for adventures just yet.”
I gaped at her. She hit her forehead with the heel of one hand.
“Oh, that’s me, done it again! Introductions come first. I’m Poppy. I’m apprentice to the sea witch, strange as that is to say, and when I’ve learned enough of her big magic, maybe I’ll be able to do enough small magic to go home. Or maybe not. Bigness has its advantages, and I like it here well enough. You’re Gillian Daye, daughter of October, fostered to the great betrayer. That’s a lineage to live down, eh?”
I blinked. “What are you talking about? And my last name isn’t ‘Daye,’ it’s ‘Marks.’”
“Oh, like your father, then? That’s kind of you. Might change your mind, might not, I suppose. I don’t really understand the way you big ones do naming. It’s all awfully complicated and doesn’t make sense to me.” She hopped down from the alcove onto the stairs, her wings fluttering soundlessly to slow her descent. “It’s nice to meet you! Awake, I mean. I met you before, but you were passed out at the time, so I don’t think it counts. Do you want food?”